Parents who have guns in the house are much more likely to talk to their kids about gun safety than parents who do not have a gun in the house, according to a recent report by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.
In August 2010, 1,621 parents were asked about gun ownership and if they had talked about gun safety with their children. The poll found that one-third of respondents with children ages 5-17 reported having a gun in the house. Of the parents with guns in the home, 82 percent said they had discussed gun safety with their children — most within the last year. Forty-eight percent of parents without guns in the home had discussed gun safety with their children, according to the poll results.
“With firearms in about one-third of the approximately 25 million U.S. households with children under 18, discussing gun safety is something all parents need to consider,” says Dr. Matthew Davis, director of the poll and associate professor of pediatrics and internal medicine in the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan Medical School. “Parents in non-gun-owning households simply cannot assume that their children will never encounter a situation involving firearms.”
Whether they own guns or not, parents who have talked to their children about gun safety were more confident that their kids will practice gun safety than parents who had not talked to their children.
When asked, “How worried are you that your child could get hurt with a gun when at a friend’s home?” 19 percent of parents say “very worried.” Among gun-owning parents, only 10 percent were very worried compared with 24 percent of parents who do not own a gun.
“When more than half of non-gun-owning parents have never discussed gun safety with their children and nearly 1 in 5 gun-owning parents have never discussed gun safety with their children, many children may be unprepared to understand and follow the basics of gun safety,” Davis said. “Parents need to learn how to talk to their children about gun safety whether they own a gun or not, to be sure their children are prepared should they ever encounter a situation where a gun is present.”
Gun safety resources for parents:
http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/guns.htm
http://www.paxusa.org/ask/index.html
http://www.kidsandguns.org/entryhall/safetytips.asp
http://www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/
Resources for kids:
http://kidshealth.org/kid/watch/house/gun_safety.html

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